{"title":"Consuming Contests: Outcome Uncertainty and Spectator Demand for Contest-based Entertainment","authors":"Patrick J. Ferguson, K. Lakhani","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3783339","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Contests that non-contestants consume for entertainment are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. We look to professional sports and exploit injury-induced changes to teams' line-ups to examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have more uncertain outcomes. Using data from the Australian Football League, we fi nd that a one standard-deviation increase in game outcome uncertainty causes, on average, an 11.2% increase in attendance. Our results extend research on contest design and information preferences by showing that spectators strongly prefer evenly-balanced contests and appear to derive entertainment utility from suspense and the resolution of uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":198334,"journal":{"name":"Labor: Personnel Economics eJournal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Labor: Personnel Economics eJournal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3783339","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Contests that non-contestants consume for entertainment are a fixture of economic, cultural and political life. We look to professional sports and exploit injury-induced changes to teams' line-ups to examine whether individuals prefer to consume contests that have more uncertain outcomes. Using data from the Australian Football League, we fi nd that a one standard-deviation increase in game outcome uncertainty causes, on average, an 11.2% increase in attendance. Our results extend research on contest design and information preferences by showing that spectators strongly prefer evenly-balanced contests and appear to derive entertainment utility from suspense and the resolution of uncertainty.
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